Authors: Kitty Margo
Midsummer's Eve (31 page)
We all stopped dead in our tracks and gaped at the
magnificent spectacle
.
“I have never seen anything like it,” Teri cried. “This has to be a
mass
hallucination.”
“Have you ever
theen
anything
tho
beautiful?”
“No, I haven’t!”
Mallory
whispered nervously. “This has to be some supernatural shit!
Eve
, I want to go home
now
.”
It was unbelievable
. Actually, it resembled a landscape painting more than real life.
The decaying remains of the Almond House stood in the midst of a fluffy sea of creamy yellow on all sides. A magnificent array of buttercups in full bloom as far as the eye could see. It was like the poppy field in the
Wizard of Oz
, only with
buttercups.
Most people call them daffodils, but I grew up hearing them called buttercups by my mom, and they look like cups of butter, so I have always referred to them as buttercups instead. Sure, over the years, teachers, friends, neighbors, boyfriends and even my children have insisted I call them daffodils, but to me they will always be buttercups. I don’t really know why.
They jutted up against the edge o
f the cornfield, all the way
to the porch of the deteriorating house. The flowers spilled from stumps, over fallen trees and obliterated the driveway that had once been on the property. The lawn was
about two acres and there wasn’
t one square inch of earth without a gorgeous, yellow buttercup sprouting from it. It was a plethora of color the likes of which none of us had ever seen.
“
Breathtaking!” Teri marveled as we waded through the
knee-deep flora.
I had been coming here to pick blackberries
for almost forty
years and had never seen more than a few flowers scattered randomly among the waist high pasture grass, wild blackberry bushes, and cow patties.
Tammy
bent down to smell a flower and then she plucked the stem. She would forever attribute that simple act as being the single worst mistake of her life!
Suffice it to say all hell broke loose!
As soon as she snapped the stem on the exquisite flower an unnatural clanging seemed to fall from the sky. It was loud, rattling and deafening and I can only compare it to the sound of thousands of tin cans falling to the ground around us and beating against each other at once. The sound was horrifying beyond belief!
Why, why, why did I come back here?
Even the air around us seemed to buzz with a static current of electricity.
Mallory
was on her knees with her hands over her ears screaming hysterically
,
and nonstop.
Tammy
stood, paralyzed with fear, as every ounce of blood seemed
t
o drain from her pale face. She
threw the flower from her hand l
ike it was a venomous snake and clutching her chest
started backing away from the flower with a look of stunned disbelief. The instant she dropped the flower the deafening noise stopped and all was quiet. Still. Calm. Deadly quiet. Not even a butterfly fluttered or a bee buzzed over the fragrant flowers.
“
What i
n the hell was that?”
Teri cried.
“I told you,” I said, shaking violently, but feeling somewhat vindicated. “Maybe you will believe me next time! The kid’s got a mean streak a mile wide.”
“But why did he do it?”
S
he wanted answers that I couldn’
t give. “You tell me.” I shuddered as I put a steadying hand on
Mallory
’
s trembling shoulder.
She jumped, screamed louder and then realizing that the unearthly noise had stopped,
looked up at me. “He’
s going to ki
ll us, isn’
t he?” She
whimpered with tears of absolute
terror streaming down her face. “That was a warning, wasn’t it? He intends to kill us!”
“Of course not.” I forced myself to smile, trying
to calm her down. “Come on, let’
s get out of the flowers. I don’t think he wants us bothering his buttercups.”
“They’re daffodils,
Eve
.”
Then I looked at
Tammy
. Her eyes were wide as saucers and she looked like she was having difficulty breathing. “
Tammy
, are you okay?”
“No,” she said with a tremulous voice, seeming to
choke on the word. “Hell no, I’
m not okay. What
wath
that?”
Even Teri appeared to be
slightly rattled, but she didn’
t want to show it. “Maybe it was an airplane breaking the sound barrier or something.”
“That was no
freak
ing
airplane!”
Mallory
jumped up flailing her arms and screaming. “And you know it!”
“She’
s right, Teri,” I agreed. “That was not an airplane.”
“I know it wasn’
t. Damn,
Eve
, I was trying to calm them down before they go into cardiac arrest.”
“Oh, sorry.”
We turned and walked carefully out of the field of flowers placing our feet strategically among the clusters and trying desperately not to crush one, but it was impossible since they were everywhere. I glanced over my shoulder at Teri.
She was deep in thought trying to get her mind around what had just happened. And li
ke a dog with a bone she couldn’
t let it go. She squatted to her knees and all you could see were her shoulders and head surrounded by an ocean of velvety yellow.
“Don’
t!”
Tammy
and
Mallory
cried simultaneously when they saw her reach for a flower.
The supreme dumb ass picked one
anyway.
Fifteen
I
mmediately the sky behind the house began to darken. We watched, speechless, as the blackest clouds I had ever seen began to roll toward us from behind the house, obliterating the sun. Within seconds the angry cauldro
n was boiling directly overhead
and it was
almost
as dark as night. A gentle breeze whipped our hair around our faces and caused the flowers to dip and sway in an undulating pattern.
“It will get worse!” I shouted just a
s a fierce howling wind descended upon us, causing the rotting shutters to bang loudly against the house. “Much worse!”
The
wind sent
dead tree limbs crashing down around us, and a chunk of roofing sailed from the top of the house just barely missing
Tammy
. A flash of lightening lit the darkness and I saw a
n airborne
limb slap
Mallory
in the face.
“Oh
my God!” s
he shrieked
, going back to her knees to cover her head and wail.
I was about to say we needed to seek shelter when a bolt of lightening forked through the dark
sky and struck the ground
. We felt the electricity from it singeing our skin as the current p
assed through our bodies and
a
lou
d boom of thunder
shook the earth under our feet. Teri,
Tammy
and I looked at each other.
Mallory
was
still howling and beseeching
the heavens.
For several seconds we were caught in the most intense electrical storm that any of us had ever witnessed. Popping, snapping, currents of electricity seemed to form an invisible barrier around us.
“He’
s going to kill us!”
Mallory
howled in between great claps of thunder as she bowed her head and clasped her hands beneath her chin. She glanced up and shouted, “Y’all better ask for forgiveness of your sins before it’s too late!” Then she recited the first verse of The Lord’s Prayer, but stopped short as the first fat drops of rain began to slap her in the face. Ignoring the rain, she bowed her head and hastily finished her recitation.
I looked to the sky, but lowered my head quickly when
I saw what looked like golf balls
zooming toward me at a high rate o
f speed. And they felt like golf
balls
when they began bouncing off my head
!
“Ouch! Oh,
thit
!” I heard
Tammy
squeal above the noise of the wind and thunder. “
Eve
, do
thomething
! Make him
t
h
op
!”
“Oh, okay,” I shouted incredulously. “Just hold on while I get my magic carpet and fly us out of here.” I didn’t pick the damn flower anyway, Teri did!
Then all other sound was drowned out by the noise the hail made hitting the tin roof of the house. It produced a horrible racket, like several sledgehammers going at full throttle on the roof. I tried to shield my head as pieces of ice dug into my face and arms and legs, and especially my head. The ice was hitting hard enough to cause skull fractures.
I kept one hand over my face, covering it so the hail wouldn’t strike me in the eye and blind me. I turned to check on the others and saw a stream of blood trailing down
Mallory
’
s injured cheek. She was still squalling with her
hands over her ears, so I wasn’
t sure if her injury had been caused by the tree limb or hail.
“Get in
the house!” I yelled
, but they couldn’
t hear me. Large chunks of hail steadily pounding the tin roof drowned out all other sound. I motioned for them to follow me, then grabbed
Mallory
’
s arm and jerked her to her feet praying that she could get herself together enough to follow me. She did, squealing every step of the way.
Inside the safety of the house we
stood huddled in a tight knot
as the fury intensified outside. Jagged forks of lightening constantly lit up the room and thunder shook the old house down to its foundation, causing bricks to crumble around the fireplace. The house creaked, groaned and swayed, but much to my
surprise didn’
t collapse around our heads. Nor did the hail break through the roof as it threatened to do.
When the wind finally calmed
Mallory
sat cowering in the corner covering her head and chanting Bible ver
ses. Teri gazed solemnly out a
broken window at the flattened flowers, tr
ying desperately to make some sens
e out of what had just happened.
Tammy
was furiously pacing and glaring at Teri with a look of unconcealed fury.
“We told you not to pick another damn flower!”
Tammy
spat, enraged and glaring accusingly at Teri. “You knew he would get mad!”
“How could you be so stupid?”
Mallory
left her corner to stand in solidarity with
Tammy
. I thought for a secon
d
they might physically attack Teri.
All of us were holding our heads in our hands and feeling like we had been hit repeatedly with a combination of iron pipes and baseball bats and we were bleeding from head to toe.
“Are you hurt,
Mallory
? Did you get this cut on your face from hail or a tree limb?” I wiped the blood from her bruised and swollen face with the hem of my shirt.
“I honestly don’t remember.”
Each of us had several nasty cuts and numerous scrapes and abrasion
s. T
he hail had demanded a quota of skin from all of us.
“I have a
splitting
headache and I
really, really want to go home
, take some Tylenol a
nd crawl in my bed and cover
my head
,
”
Mallory
whimpered.
“Me too.”
Tammy
was quick to agree. “And if I get out of here
alive, you better believe I won’
t ever
thep
foot near
thith houth
again!”
“You won’t ever step foot near this house again, right?”
And what was the diva doing? Why thinking, of course. She was sure she could solve any problem if she deliberated on it long enough, which was unusual for her. Not the thinking part, the fact that while she spent precious time pondering, she was also allowing an unsightly flaw to go unattended on her porcelain skin. I would have bet good money that under any other circumstance, she would have been on her way to her cosmetic surgeon to see if any of her abrasions should require stitches and his skilled hands.
“Why would the child get so angry because we picked a flower?” she asked. “He obsesses over his flowers worse than Lawrence obsesses over his sod.”
“Who cares?”
Mallory
stormed. “He has already tried to kill us! Why don’t you present yourself as a human sacrifice to him, Teri, so he might let the rest of us live?”
“Oh, aren’t we the humorous one now? When your caterwauling was the only sound I heard above the deafening noise of the storm a short while ago.”
“You caused the s
torm, you stupid bitch! And don’
t you dare pick another flower if we make it out of here alive! If you do, so help me, I will personally tell Lawrence about the FedEx man
. A
nd the landscaper. And the pool boy!”
Wow!
Mallory
meant business!
“Who knows what he will do to us next time!”
Suddenly, I noticed th
at it was quiet outside. I didn’
t hear the rapid fire hail pounding the tin roof. “Listen y’all
. It’
s stopped.” All was quiet as we ventured back outside. “Be careful,” I said, when we stood on the porch. “All of these boards are rotten and you could fall through. We have incurred more than enough injuries for one day.”
“Amen to that,”
Mallory
mumbled and groaned.
We carefully placed one foot in front of the other until we stepped off the porch, back into the amazing array of buttercups.
“Look at that.”
Tammy
whispered, in awe. “
Batheball thized
hail and not a
thingle
flower
ith
broken. How
ith
that
potthible
?”
“Baseball sized
hail and not a single flower
broken. How is that possible?” I translated for a quizzical Teri before she even asked.
Tammy
was right. All the buttercups stood ramrod straight and tall. I
couldn’
t even find one that had been
slightly bent. Where was all
the hail that had fallen? The flowers should be under at least a foo
t or two of ice, but they weren’
t. They looked exactly as they had when we had first seen them. Not one flower was damaged!
“I looked out
the window during the storm and the flowers were flatter than pancakes. Damn! Well one thing is for sure,” Teri s
aid. “The child certainly doesn’
t want us
picking his flowers. So I
suggest we abide by his wishes.”
“No
thit
!”
“The rest of us were smart enough to figure that out the first time, after
Tammy
picked one!”
Mallory
snarled
.
“Yeah, Teri.”
Tammy
was still moaning and clutching her aching head.
“I had to be sure.” Teri said, dismissing the matter as she waded through the flowers and headed for a narrow path that snaked its way through the cornfield.
“Where does she think she’s going now?”
Mallory
snapped.
“She thinks she’
s going to the graveyard,
of course,” Teri called over her shoulder
like it was the only logical answer to the problem at hand.
“I am in dire need of medical attention and that demented reject from a witch coven wants to visit a graveyard!”
Mallory
seemed
unable to believe what she
had just heard from Teri’s lips
.
I could tell she was on the verge of req
uiring mind numbing medication.
“Do you happen to see the gash on my face? The one with the blood gushing from it!”
“Pl
ease
,
Mallory
.
” As usual Teri jumped in to make matters worse. “
Must you ever embellish?
The wound has stopped bleeding and has actually dried and crusted, most unbecoming by the way, on the side of your face.”
“Granted, the flow of blood seems to have subsided for the moment, but there is no way in hell that I am going to a graveyard.”
Mallory
stood in the ocean of yellow with her arms akimbo, her eyes blaring and her bloody upper lip in a pout.
“I’
m sure you’
re embellishing the fact, as you tend to do, that you
r surface abrasions
require medical attention. We all took the same beating from the hail as you
did, and we don’
t req
uire an emergency room visit
. Soap and water and a few band-aids would do us all a
world of good
.” Teri rubbed her head gingerly and contin
ued, “Nevertheless
if you insi
st, walk
on back to the cabin. We’
ll meet you back there later.”
Mallory
ran up to Teri, spun her around, and gritted between clenched teeth, “You know I am not going back there by my
damn
self!”
Ignoring her fit of temper, Teri said, “Then perhaps you had better stifle your incessant love of whining and follow us. Or find yourself a stump among the flowers to sit on and wait for us to return. Just remember to keep an ever alert eye to the sky.”
“You know, Teri? I hope the little boy takes you with him the next time he appears!”
“No. You don
’
t. Trust me, I would haunt your ass and keep you terrified every day for the rest of your natural life.”
We were about half
-
way through the cornfield when
Tammy
asked, “Are
Mallory
and I the only
oneth
concerned that
thumthing
really
thrange
is going on and we coul
d have died back there? That wath
thum
real
Thephen
King
thit
.
Thouldn’
t
we be concentrating on getting the hell out of here,
inthead
of touring a graveyard?”
“Some really strange
Stephen King
shit, and shouldn’t we be getting the hell out of here,” I translated.
“I think you are being a tad over dramatic, as well.” Teri giggled. “For heavens sake, he is just a small child.”
“Quite frankly, my dear,”
Tammy
said, stealing a line
from my favorite movie. “I don’
t give a damn. It
doethn’t
matter how old he
ith
,
he
thill
could have killed
uth
.
That hail
wathn’
t
a joke! And anyway, he may look like a t
wo year old, but in reality,
he’th
probably more like two hundred
yearth
old.”
“It doesn’t matter how old he is, he still could have killed us. That hell wasn’t a joke and he’s probably two hundred years old.”
“Well, he didn’
t kill us, did he?
” Teri replied.
And I think we are all convinced that he could if he had wanted to. He is trying to show us something. Can’
t you see that? Not kill us. We’
ve just got to figure out what it is. So co
me on, we’
re almost there. Don’
t any of you people read Sylvia Browne?”
Some of the tombstones dated back to the 1700's. Delbert Almond had a large ornate tombstone. There wa
s a smaller tombstone beside
his with a sad little angel with outstretched arms perched on top.
“
Chi
ldren died young back then, didn’
t they?
Tharah Louithe
, aged 11 and Eliza Jane, aged 12. They
muth
have been
thitherth
.”
Tammy
read, having recovered enough to show some interest in the old cemetery. “Look how
thad
the angel
ith
on the grave beside Delbert Almond.”
“Sarah Louise and they must have been sisters,” I whispered to Teri before she even got her mouth open.
“The angel on the grave beside Delbert Almond looks sad.”
Mallory
was still sulking an
d sitting in the shade,
nervously watching the sky
. She
wouldn’
t even glance at a tombstone, but would occasionally shoot daggers at Teri with her eyes.
“Yes
,
Tammy
, unfortunately, children died very young back then. Yellow Fever cam
e through this area in the 1800’
s and
almost wiped out the children.”
We walked past the family cemetery with large, elaborate tombstones into the slave graveyard with only slate rocks marking their final resting places. We heard, “Whippoorwill, whippoorwill, whippoorwill” and clutched our chests at the unexpected sound. Whippoorwills only sing at night.
“What
wath
that?”
“It was a whippoorwill,
Tammy
,” I said.
“You’ve heard about the birds, haven’t you,
Mallory
?”
Teri asked, with an evil grin curving her lips
. “One legend says that a whippoorwill can sense when a soul is departing earth and capture it. Another belief is that if you hear a whippoorwill singing it is a death omen.”
“Screw
you, Teri.”
We were deep in the woods now and it would soon be dusk. “We really should head back,” I said. “It will be dark soon and I’m hungry.”
We walked back through the family cemetery and I heard
Tammy
gasp. “Would you look at that?”
I turned, followed her gaze and was compl
etely astonished
. On the child’
s grave beside of Delbert Almonds lay a single magnificent buttercup.
Tammy
hurried to the grave. “
Theth
Andrew Almond,” she read. “Beloved
thon
of Delbert Almond.”
Looking at
Tammy
with an irritated expression, Teri followed her to the grave and read
, “Seth Andrew Almond, Beloved S
on of Delbert Almond.”
“
Thath
what I
thaid
!”
“That flower
wasn’t
there a few minutes ago when we passed his grave, was it?” I asked, remembering that
Tammy
had brought our attention to the sad little angel perched on the headstone and there
definitely
hadn’t been a flower adorning his grave then.
“No, it
wathn’t
there.”
Tammy
agreed.
“Why would he put a flower on Delbert Almond’s son’s grave?” Teri asked, puzzled. Then, the ca
ndidate for the Dorethea Dix Psychiatric
Hospital in Raleigh actually reached out her hand to pick up the flower.
Fortunately, a loud chorus of, “Stop!” from the three of us, caused her hand to halt less than an inch from the flower and most likely prevented an
other disaster
.
Teri looked around and whispered, “Sorry. I forgot. He must be here now.”
“He
re? With us now! Not back at the house!”
Mallory
shrieked
,
looking like she might leave this world at any minute. Honestly, the girl looked pitiful. Her bruised and swollen face was ghastly pale under the bright red scrapes and her hair almost stood straight up on her head.
